CATEGORY: Little Pieces of Life

The Dilemma

George walks out of the examination centre deep in thought. Although he knows, deep down, that he has done very well, no one is waiting for him outside, and his phone remains silent. No one from home has called to ask how it went, whether he found the exam difficult, whether he is happy with how he did. He expected this. And yet, as he watches the other candidates around him calling their families and talking excitedly about the exam, he feels that familiar tightness that has been with him for almost three years now.

Painting had been his great love since childhood. He could not remember exactly when he had started drawing, but he did remember that there had always been a pencil and a piece of paper somewhere nearby. As he grew older, that love did not fade, as his parents may have expected. On the contrary, it grew stronger. He began reading, experimenting, spending hours in front of a canvas, and at some point the School of Fine Arts stopped being a distant thought. It became his dream.

At home, however, things had begun to grow difficult from the moment he dared to say it out loud. At first, there were a few comments that seemed almost harmless. “And what will you do afterwards?” “How are you going to make a living from painting?” “It’s fine as a hobby.” Over time, the comments became more frequent. Little remarks at the dinner table, complaints whenever they saw him painting, comparisons with the children of family friends who had chosen more “secure” fields of study, conversations about his future taking place right in front of him, as though his own opinion were merely a detail that would sooner or later change.

His father found it harder than anyone else to accept his choice. He had worked for many years to build his own business and took it for granted that one day his son would join him. He did not see it merely as professional succession. He saw it as security. Something ready-made that he could hand over to his child so that George would never have to struggle as he himself had.

“I built all of this for you,” he would often tell him.

And every time George heard those words, he felt as though, along with the business, he was also being handed a debt he had never asked for.

For the past three years, he had tried many times to explain that he was rejecting neither his father nor what his father had built. He simply wanted something different for himself. Yet the more he tried to defend his choice, the more he felt that he was hurting the people he loved. Sometimes he wondered whether he was selfish. At other times, whether he was ungrateful. There were even nights when he looked at his paintings and thought how much easier everything would be if only he did not want what he wanted quite so much.

And now he had just walked out of the entrance exams for the school he had dreamed of attending for years. He had done well. He should have been happy. Instead, he looked at his phone again.

No calls.

For a moment, he thought about calling home himself. Then he slipped the phone back into his pocket.

He was no longer so afraid of failing the exams.

He was beginning to fear what would happen if he succeeded.

When George returns home, the atmosphere is heavy. His mother is in the kitchen and, the moment she sees him walk in, her first thought is to ask how the exam went. She does not. Over the past few years, she has learned to weigh her words before speaking. Whenever she tries to support her son’s choice, her husband accuses her of taking his side, of encouraging him in a decision he considers foolish, of giving him more confidence instead of helping him “come to his senses.” And so even a question as simple as “How did it go?” feels capable of triggering yet another argument.

Mr Stratos is sitting at the table. He briefly looks up when he sees his son enter, but says nothing at all about the exams. As though they had never happened. As though George had not spent the past several months preparing for this day. Instead, he tells him that if he wants to go away with his friends during the summer, he will first have to work at the family business.

George remains silent for a moment. It is not the work itself that bothers him. He has helped his father many times before and does not think it unreasonable to work in order to pay for part of his holiday. But he knows very well that this is not just about that. The business has found its way into almost every conversation between them over the past three years, like a constant reminder of the path his father believes he should eventually follow.

His mother tries to calm the situation. She tells her husband that perhaps today is not the right time for this conversation, that the boy has only just returned from his exams, that they could at least let him settle down. She does not have time to finish her sentence. Mr Stratos shoots her an angry look, abruptly gets up from the table and leaves the kitchen.

She follows him. George remains where he is, but from the next room he can hear his mother speaking quietly, trying to calm him down. He cannot hear everything she says. But he hears his father’s reply clearly.

“See if you can talk some sense into your precious son.”

His mother says nothing.

George stares at the table in front of him and feels that familiar weight returning. A few hours earlier, he had walked out of the examination centre believing he had done very well. For a moment, he had allowed himself to imagine that perhaps he had made it. Now that small spark of happiness had almost disappeared. And the worst part was that he was not only angry with his father. A part of him was beginning to wonder, once again, whether perhaps his father was right.

Perhaps he really was making everything more difficult for no reason. Perhaps he was ungrateful. Perhaps, since his father had managed to secure a ready-made job and a safe future for him, he did not even have the right to refuse them. Perhaps his mother’s sadness, the arguments at home and the distance that had grown between him and his father were ultimately the price of his own stubbornness.

For a moment, a thought crossed his mind — one he had had many times over the past three years.

If I just did what he wants, all of this would stop.

From the next room, he can hear his parents’ voices, sometimes louder, sometimes quieter, but he no longer tries to make out what they are saying. He knows. He has heard the same conversation, in different words, many times over the past three years. Only this time he feels different. Perhaps because today, more than on other days, he needed to come home and hear one simple question.

“How did it go?”

He did not need them to agree with his choice. He did not expect his father suddenly to become excited about the School of Fine Arts. He simply wanted them, even for a few minutes, to show an interest in something that mattered to him.

He feels angry. Very angry. Angry with his father for refusing even to acknowledge his effort, with his mother for once again not daring to ask the question she wanted to ask, and with himself for still waiting for their approval. Yet almost immediately after the anger comes guilt. He sees his mother once again trying to keep the peace and thinks that because of him she will spend another evening trying to calm his father down. He remembers how many times they have argued over the same issue, and a thought appears almost automatically: if he were not so determined to pursue painting, perhaps there would be more peace at home.

Then he thinks about his father. He remembers the countless hours he has spent at the business, how exhausted he used to come home some evenings, how much he had sacrificed so that his family could live without the hardships he himself had known. George knows all of this. He is not indifferent to it. He is grateful.

And that is precisely where guilt finds room to grow.

Because inside him, two things are beginning to blur together, although they are not necessarily the same: gratitude for everything his father has given him and the obligation to live the life his father has planned for him.

For a while, he tries to imagine himself in the business. He could do it. He would have a secure job, a good income and probably a much easier start to his professional life than many people his age. His father would be proud. His mother would no longer have to stand between them. Perhaps the arguments would end. The house would become peaceful again.

Everything could become so much easier, if only he gave up one thing.

His own dream.

And then he wonders whether that is, after all, the price he is supposed to pay. Does growing up sometimes mean putting aside what you want and doing what you are supposed to do? Is his desire to paint really a luxury? Does his father see something that he, at eighteen, is still too young to understand?

One question follows another until George can no longer easily distinguish which thoughts are truly his own and which ones he has heard so many times that he has begun to believe them.

And yet, every time he imagines giving up the School of Fine Arts, something inside him resists. It is not stubbornness. He does not want to defeat his father or prove that he is right. He simply wants to paint. That is what he wanted before the arguments began, before he had to defend his choice, before painting was transformed inside his home from something he loved into a “problem.”

And perhaps that is what confuses him most: he has done nothing he believes he should apologise for, and yet he feels guilty.

Guilty for disappointing his father. Guilty for upsetting his mother. Guilty for their arguments. Guilty even for the happiness he felt as he walked out of the examination centre, as though he were not allowed to feel happy about something that causes so much turmoil for the people he loves.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, a thought appears that frightens him more than any of the others:

If they can only be happy when I am not, which one of us am I supposed to choose?

George knows that he has grown up privileged. He has wanted for almost nothing. His parents made sure he had everything he needed, and often much more. He grew up in a beautiful home, attended a good school, travelled, and had the opportunity to pursue the things he loved without his family having to worry about the cost. His father worked hard to create this life, and George knows it. He takes none of it for granted. Perhaps that is why, every time he tries to defend his own dream, a part of him feels that he has no right to complain.

After all, this is what he often hears from his father. He has never lacked anything. Other young people worry about whether they will find a job, while he has a ready-made business waiting for him. He does not have to start from nothing, fear the future or endure the difficulties his father went through. He could simply step onto a road already paved for him. And yet he chooses an uncertain one. In his father’s eyes, this is not merely recklessness. At times, it almost seems like a rejection of everything he has built.

But George is not rejecting any of it. And that is what makes it so difficult. He loves his father, recognises everything he has given him and feels grateful for the life he has had. He does not want to hurt him. He does not want to make him feel that a lifetime of hard work meant nothing. At the same time, he cannot understand why his gratitude has to be proven through a career choice. Why “I have given you so much” must eventually become “so now you will do what I believe is best for you.”

Over the past three years, this conflict has begun to change even the way he feels about painting. Once, he would paint and lose all sense of time. Now there are moments when he sits in front of the canvas and hears his father’s words inside his head. Whether he will be able to make a living from it. Whether he understands what he is giving up. Whether he realises how easy his life could be. Whether all of this is simply youthful stubbornness that he will one day regret.

The pressure is no longer confined to their conversations.

It has moved inside him.

And now he begins to doubt not so much whether he loves painting, but whether he has the right to choose it.

That is his real dilemma. On one side is a safe, ready-made life, approved by his family. A life that would make his father proud and would probably restore peace at home. On the other is something he loves deeply but that can promise him nothing. No money. No success. No security.

Only the feeling that when he paints, he is exactly where he wants to be.

There are moments when he becomes angry with his father. He wants to shout that he never asked him to prepare a life for him, that a child cannot be born already owing a debt to a future someone else has designed on his behalf. But immediately he feels guilty even for thinking it. He remembers everything he has been given, and his anger gives way to guilt. As though the financial comfort in which he grew up somehow took away part of his right to disagree.

Sometimes he catches himself wishing the business did not exist. The thought frightens him and he immediately takes it back. He does not wish his father had failed. He does not wish they had less. He only wishes he could make his own choice without feeling that, by choosing his own life, he is somehow invalidating someone else’s.

And that is where he finds himself trapped. If he follows his father, he fears he will betray something deeply his own. If he follows himself, he feels he is betraying his father. He does not yet know which of the two he can bear more easily.

Perhaps, however, the question slowly beginning to take shape inside him is not whom he should disappoint.

Perhaps it is something more difficult:

How far does a child’s gratitude extend, and where does their right to become themselves begin?

In the days that follow, George returns again and again to the same thoughts. It is not the first time he has wondered whether it would be easier to give in, but it is the first time he seriously tries to imagine what that life would look like. Waking up in the morning and going to his father’s business, gradually learning the work, taking on more responsibility and eventually stepping into the position that has been waiting for him all these years. He knows he could do it. He might even be very good at it. He does not reject the business because he considers it beneath him, nor because he believes he is destined for something greater. It is simply that whenever he imagines himself there, he sees a life he could live but does not recognise as his own.

And then the other thought returns. What does “my own life” mean when so much of what you have is the result of someone else’s life? His father worked to give him security, choices, a daily life free from financial fear. George has never had to struggle for things other young people consider a dream. And instead of making him feel freer to choose, this sometimes makes him feel less free. As though every privilege he has enjoyed has been entered into some invisible account that he must now repay.

He wonders whether his father is right when he says that there are things he will understand when he is older. He is eighteen. What does he really know about life? What does he know about bills, responsibilities, family, financial insecurity? Painting gives him joy, but is that enough to build an entire life around? What if, ten years from now, he discovers that his father was right? What if by then it is too late?

The pressure he has been under for so long has begun to do more than upset him.

It is making him distrust his own judgement.

But there are also moments when a different thought crosses his mind. If he ultimately follows his father’s path and one day becomes unhappy, who will be responsible then? Will he be able to say forever that it was not his decision? Or will there come a day when he has to admit that, however intense the pressure may have been, he was still the one who eventually said yes?

The thought unsettles him because, for the first time, giving in no longer looks only like a sacrifice.

It looks like a choice too.

But the hardest part is not the career.

It is his father.

George does not simply want his permission to paint. He wants to look at him and see that his father is still proud of him. He wants to be able to disagree with him without feeling that he is losing his love. He wants, one day, to hear him say, “It isn’t what I would have chosen, but it is your life.”

And for as long as those words do not come, a part of him continues trying to find a way to have both: his own dream and his father’s approval.

Perhaps he cannot have both.

At least not now.

That possibility is what hurts him most. Because then the dilemma is no longer between painting and the business. It becomes something much deeper: can he bear to disappoint someone he loves in order not to disappoint himself?

And amid all this confusion, a question slowly begins to emerge — one he had never dared to ask before:

For my father to love me, do I have to become who he wants me to be?

Later, alone in his room, George sits in front of a half-finished painting. He has not touched it for days. He looks at the brushes on his desk and remembers how different he once felt when he painted. Back then, there was nothing to prove to anyone. He did not wonder whether he was good enough, whether he could make a living from it or whether his choice was “serious.” He painted because he loved it.

Over the past three years, however, even that love has begun to carry a weight. Every time he returned to his room after an argument with his father, the brushes and canvases almost seemed like evidence of something for which he was constantly expected to apologise.

He wonders exactly when he began to feel this way. When his happiness became a source of tension at home. When he started lowering his voice whenever he spoke about painting, hiding his excitement, carefully choosing what he said in front of his father. He had even learned to hide small successes, because he knew that a kind word from a teacher or a painting he himself felt proud of could easily lead back to the same conversation:

“That’s all very well, George, but at some point you need to start thinking seriously about your future.”

Perhaps that was what hurt him most. He was not asking his father to love painting. Nor was he asking him to believe that his choice was the best one. He only wanted to feel that they could disagree without something between them changing. That he could become someone different from the person his father had imagined without ceasing to be the son he loved and was proud of.

George remains in front of the unfinished painting for a long time. He has found no answer, and the more he thinks about it, the more he understands that perhaps there is no answer in which no one gets hurt. If he follows what he wants, his father will probably be angry. The tension at home may continue. His mother may remain caught between them. Nothing guarantees that one day his father will change his mind, look at his paintings and tell him that he had been right all along.

And for the first time, George does not try to invent such an ending in his mind.

There is, however, something he is beginning to see a little more clearly. For three years, he has been trying to find a choice that would allow him to keep everything: his dream, his father’s approval, his mother’s peace of mind, the balance at home. As though it were his responsibility to make sure no one became angry, sad or disappointed.

Perhaps that is why he feels so tired.

He is not only trying to decide what to do with his life.

He is also trying to manage everyone else’s feelings.

He still does not know what he will do. But he knows something that, until recently, he could barely allow himself to think: his father’s anger does not necessarily mean that he is doing something wrong. His mother’s sadness does not mean that he caused it or that it is his responsibility to make it disappear. And the guilt he feels is not, in itself, proof that he has done something wrong.

He raises his eyes to the painting.

It remains unfinished.

He does not pick up the brush yet.

He simply looks at it.

Perhaps, he thinks, before deciding what kind of life he will live, he first needs to understand which part of this weight is truly his.

And which part is not.